


Push Me Away, Hold Me Close

by Creativityx



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Ava finding a reason to stay at the OCS, F/F, Lilith learning to care for someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creativityx/pseuds/Creativityx
Summary: Ava didn't want to be their halo bearer. She hated the idea of being owned by these people. So she ran, but Lilith could run faster, would always be there to catch her. She didn't want to be caught. But, over time? Maybe Ava didn't need to run from it anymore, she starts to find a reason to stay, to run towards something instead of away from it.
Relationships: Sister Lilith/Ava Silva
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	Push Me Away, Hold Me Close

Hand to hand we meet, _why does it always have to be with fists?_

Ava had noticed it, the way Lilith would hit at her harder than anyone else, who, once off of the training mat, treated Ava with discontent. They might as well have still been trading blows, _her violence easier to understand._

Ava tried to make Lilith like her. _Wanted her to like her._ She knew she was bound to the OCS, no matter how far she could run, Lilith could run farther and catch her at her end-point before she even knew what that point was.

_She learnt that quickly, how good Lilith was at catching her._

Her first and only attempt was subtle, she snuck out of a window late at night, pulling a warm jacket around her shoulders, its hood over her head, hoping to mask herself in the darkness of the night.

_She managed only two days before Lilith found her._

‘You think you could so easily escape this Ava?’ Lilith grunted from above her, Ava’s arms pinned and blood on her face from the roughness of their fight, the fist to her face hurting like hell still.

‘You don’t _own me_ , they don’t own me, I’ll get out of here with your stupid halo and you won’t see me again,’ Ava hissed in return, thrashing in Lilith’s grip, _uselessly,_ the woman was much stronger than her even without the halo.

‘The only place you’re going is back to the OCS,’ Lilith spoke, rolling backwards onto her heels before pulling Ava off of the ground, a firm hand around her wrist as she dragged her to the car that would take them back _to her prison._

The car ride was stiff, filled with frustration between the two women, ‘Why can’t you just let me go,’ Ava sighed, rubbing at her wrist.

Lilith turned for just a moment, her hands tight around the wheel, a frown clear on her face, ‘Why can’t you just _stay?’_

Ava felt tears well and pushed them back down with the lock of her jaw, ‘They don’t want me, you don’t want me, all you all want is the magic disc stuck in my back.’

_Lilith gave no response to that, but Ava could see the way her body tightened that bit more, the way the steering wheel creaked at her grip, she looked… Ava wasn’t sure what that emotion was._

When they got out the car, Ava didn’t try to run straight back out, Lilith’s face deciding for her. _She took that long walk back to her room, the room of the halo bearers and lied down._

_Hand to hand we meet, maybe, just maybe, there will start to be fewer fists._

Ava wakes the same time as she had for the past months, 5 am, ready for breakfast in the dining hall before hours of combat training drag her down.

She enters the hall to a hand waving in the air, Camila, sat beside Lilith, offering her a place to sit.

Ava gets ready to ignore it, to sit _literally_ anywhere else, anywhere that Lilith wasn’t but Camila’s loud, cheerful voice breaks through, ‘Ava! Ava! Where are you going? Come sit with us.’

She feels herself flinch at the offer but with the room’s eyes now drawn to her, carries her tray over and finds herself squashed directly between Camila and Lilith. _This is a terrible idea Camila, oh my god,_ was all she could think.

There’s a silence between the three of the girl’s for a while, only the sound of cutlery tapping against their plates creating noise.

‘So, Ava,’ Camila starts, ‘What do you think of combat training?’

Ava lowered her fork, _she was asking how she liked the things here… after she just tried to escape,_ ‘Uh- you know, there’s worse things I guess.’

She heard the dull clang of cutlery tapping against each other, looking over to her left to see Lilith just as bemused by the question, ‘We have an excellent running track,’ she quips.

Ava huffed at that, seeing the smirk on Lilith’s face at the comment, ‘Yeah? Maybe I’ll run that track ’til I’m faster than you.’

When Ava turned to see the other woman’s reaction to her comment, it was to Lilith, an elbow on the table, chin in her hand, ‘I’d like to see you try, little bird.’

‘Little bird?’ Ava returned.

‘Always trying to fly away before you’ve learnt how to do so,’ Lilith offered before picking up her plate, hooking her leg over the bench, and leaving. 

She watched the woman leave the room and found herself for the next hour caught in the wiles of Camila’s excitement about combat training and the various weapons she could wield.

The next week was the same routine as the one she had before she ran. Though, this time, with tighter controls, always someone watching her making sure she didn’t _run._

_It just made her want to run more._

On Friday, Lilith stood at her door at the crack of dawn, a question ready, ‘Do you want to run?’

Ava groaned into her pillow, wrapping her blanket tightly around her, ‘You of all people should know the answer to that.’

A silence passed between the two of them causing Ava to raise her head and check if the other woman was still there, _she was,_ speaking calmly, ‘I didn’t mean run away from here.’

‘Where to then?’ Ava found herself asking, her curiosity getting the better of her.

‘The running track, we really do have one, little bird,’ Lilith returned, leaning against the doorframe. _Ava wasn’t a fool._ Lilith was the one who was sent to watch her today, she would grab her the moment she tried to make it through the doorway without her.

‘What about,’ Ava hummed, moving into a sitting position on her bed, moving so the blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, ‘I just stay in this bed all day and do nothing, no need to watch me just lie here.’

Lilith pushed off of the doorframe and stood by the side of Ava’s bed, refusing to sit, her nose scrunching up when she almost did so, ‘Do you really want to spend your time here like this, wasting away? You can move, why not do so?’

_Move. God, she could move but she wasn’t allowed to really move, to leave this place. Walk here, hit this, sleep now, wake up soon, she hated it all._

‘Can I? Can I really? I can see how you’re all just waiting for me to run again, I didn’t lose my mind despite not moving all those years you know?’ She finds herself huffing out, gripping her blanket tighter, trying to hide beneath it.

‘I never said you did,’ Lilith offered, her hand grazing the edge of the blanket, Ava almost feeling the ghost of her fingers on her skin. 

’Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get something out of running the track and if you don’t? I’ll let you just hide in your room every time I watch you.’ 

‘Okay,’ Ava felt herself saying, slowly dropping the blanket from her shoulders and rubbing at her face, ‘Take me to it.’

Lilith nodded and with a gesture of her hand, making sure Ava would follow, she left the room.

It was a short trek to the running track if you could call it that. More like a winding path with no real structure, only dirt and patches of mud that vaguely took the shape of a track.

‘This is it?’ Ava questioned, toeing the dirt as she stood at what Lilith claimed was the starting line.

‘Afraid of some dirt, little bird?’ Lilith teased, getting herself into a starting position. 

‘No- I just, thought you said there was a running track?’ Ava returned, frowning as the path curved down and into the trees.

‘We do, here it is, now, the real question is if you’re going to try to run or live in fear that I’ll always catch you.’ 

Ava gritted her teeth at that. No. She was going to get out of here and if step one was running faster than this woman, to hell with it, she was going to do it.

‘Bring it.’

Lilith let out a laugh and called for the start of their run, getting leagues ahead of Ava in only seconds.

A minute in, Ava couldn’t even see Lilith anymore. She could just, _veer off,_ away from the track and leave the OCS.

But? When she thought of the woman waiting for her at the finish line, the trust she gave to run so far ahead, Ava couldn’t help but stay on course. 

She weaved her way through the trees and felt the heaviness of her shoes as the mud began to cake onto them. _She didn’t hate it, the running towards something this time, instead of away._

When she reached the end of the path, Lilith stood there, barely out of breath, her face looking concerned until Ava pulled up in front of her.

‘You didn’t run away,’ Lilith spoke.

She rubbed a hand against the back of her neck as she looked at the older woman, ‘I kind of, just, felt like running towards something this time, you know?’

Lilith nodded and offered a smile, ‘Well, perhaps with practice, it will be me running towards you.’

Ava could only laugh, ‘Beat your freakishly long legs? I don’t think so.’

She felt something knock against her side, Lilith’s arm against her own almost in camaraderie, ‘You have something I don’t.’

‘What’s that?’

Lilith tapped a hand against Ava’s back, right in the centre between her shoulder blades, ‘The halo.’

Ava frowned at that, ‘What’s the halo have to do with this?’

Lilith paused her walk, Ava bumping into her back, ‘The halo,’ she paused, ‘Gives its bearer immense power, a power that humans would not typically wield.’

‘These powers vary from bearer to bearer, but its core function remains the same, you can will it to give you what you need and in this case, you can will it to give you the speed to best me.’ 

Ava couldn’t hold back her confusion at that, ‘You’re going to teach me how to run away from you?’

Lilith hummed, beginning their walk back to the grounds of the Cat’s Cradle once more, ‘I suppose I am.’ 

In the following weeks, the people that watched Ava each day began to shift until every day, Ava knew that bang on the door to wake her would be from Lilith’s hand.

She opens the door and there she is, ‘Ready to try to outrun me again?’

‘You know it,’ Ava returns.

Their trek to the track is slow, conversation flowing between the two, ‘You’re improving control over the halo,’ Lilith comments.

‘Really? You think so?’ Ava returns, unable to hold back her excitement.

‘I do, as so, today, I’ll be matching your pace, side-by-side I want you to push past where you usually pace yourself,’ she states, placing a hand to Ava’s back as she guides her to their starting point.

‘With the halo?’

‘With the halo,’ Lilith confirms.

So they run, at each other’s side this time and Ava tries to use the halo to get ahead, _and fails, over and over again, the halo flaring for only a moment before fading once again._

‘What’s wrong?’ Lilith asks at her left.

‘It’s not working Lil, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,’ Ava groans, wiping the sweat from her brow as she huffs each time a foot hits the muddied ground.

‘Let me help,’ the other woman offers before placing a hand to her back.

‘Wha-‘ Ava starts.

‘Just trust me.’

She nods at that and tries to keep pace despite her exhaustion.

‘Feel my hand, I want you to try to push it back, away, push me away with the halo,’ Lilith speaks, placing the palm of her hand firmly, almost roughly, against Ava’s back.

‘I don’t know how to,’ Ava feels herself crying out in desperation, each attempt to flare the halo flittering out like a dying lightbulb.

‘Yes you do Ava, I’ve seen it when you train with the others, you know how to use the halo, now push me away from you, just focus, focus on my hand, on me, and push me away.’ 

_She focuses. On the warmth of Lilith’s hand, on the comfort, she feels from it, on the chance to be something more Lilith had offered her over these weeks. She flares._

With a deep breath, she pushes her back, feels Lilith’s hand fall away from her back and runs harder and faster than she ever had before.

_When she reaches the end of the path,_ it’s her who waits for Lilith. Her who sees her face flushed from exertion, looking like she actually had to push herself to catch up to Ava.

When she reaches her, it’s to pull Ava in her arms tightly, ‘You did it, you pushed me away and with that, you pushed the halo to give you the speed to outrun me.’

Ava could only tuck her head underneath Lilith’s chin her voice quiet as she asks, ‘What do we do now?’

Lilith loosens her grip, only enough to draw back and look at Ava’s face, ‘What do you want, Ava?’

She can’t help the way her eyes water, her lips wobble as she pushes her face against Lilith’s chest, ‘I want to stay here with you.’

Lilith only offers a gentle laugh, pushing Ava back before ducking until their eyes were at the same level, ‘Then stay, be our halo bearer, be _my_ halo bearer and help us fix it all.’

‘Do you think I can do it?’ She sniffs out.

‘You’ve already done amazing things, things many halo bearers have fallen trying to do, I know you’re ready and capable for it all,’ Lilith returns, pausing for just a moment before she places a hand against one of Ava’s cheeks, ‘You won’t have to do it alone, I’ll be at your side the whole way.’

She nods before pushing back into Lilith’s embrace, ‘I don’t want to push away from you again.’

‘I’ll train until we’re the same pace,’ Lilith speaks quietly, ‘Until people question which one of us is actually bearing the halo.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Good, now let’s get back to the Cradle, _a slow walk,_ how about that?’ Lilith speaks, wrapping an arm around one of Ava’s shoulders.

Ava just tucks herself against Lilith’s side and walks, walks to the place she had spent so long trying to run from, to a place where she could, after so long, find a home. 

_Hand to hand we meet, no longer with fists, for these hands were made to hold one another._


End file.
